In the Down Under cafe kitchen at the University of Nevada, Reno, Prasan Vatella, 65, chops broccoli and carrots on the open grill.
“When you feed people, you make people happy,” Vatella says.
He’s been cooking for over four decades and it’s become second nature for him. “It’s all that I know,” he explained.
Vatella was born in Thailand in 1960 and was raised by his Thai mother and his American stepfather who was a U.S. Airman. In 1975, after the Vietnam War, Vatella immigrated to South Carolina along with his family.
When hearing the news that they would be moving to the United States, Vatella was overjoyed after he says he faced discrimination in Thailand for being raised by a white stepfather.
“I wanted to be American,” Vatella said.
In South Carolina, Vatella did not feel American though. The nickname he gives himself comes from an insult he was often called in high school: “China Man.”
“Everybody when they look at me you know…. They don't know Thai … Filipino.” Vatella said. “I just laugh at them. I smile.”
Vatella says his positivity comes from his mother’s Buddhist teachings and the time he spent with her.
“[When] I talk to her, I feel good. I ask her to show me the way –the good way,” he says. “My mom is like my god, man”.
After two years in South Carolina, Vatella and his family moved to Reno in 1977 to be closer with his aunt. He went to Hug High but dropped out when he was seventeen to work as a bus boy at the Nugget. After two years he left to become a line cook at the Tivoli Garden, a Chinese restaurant in the Eldorado. He then started cooking at the Down Under because he says it was closer to his apartment.
“I like working at Argenta Hall, I know everybody there,” he concluded.